


Murder Your Saints

by rawquelicious



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternative explanations for Titans, Creepy Armin, Cyborg Mikasa, Gen, Major Character Undeath, Major character death - Freeform, Old Technology meaning Present Technology, Resurrection, alternative universe, plot divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 03:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13158417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rawquelicious/pseuds/rawquelicious
Summary: Mikasa is a cyborg in the sense that she keeps rebuilding herself long after she longs to die. Jean never thought of himself as a religious fanatic, but that’s what war does to people. Armin may be the worst of them all.A heart warming story of resurrection and destroying the world you helped save.





	Murder Your Saints

**Author's Note:**

> I found this unfinished draft of 3 years ago in my Drive, so I finished and polished it up, and here it is. There is no plot here, and a lot of alternative facts.  
> It was written before Titans were explained in canon, so be kind and thank you.

“The war is over”,

They tell Mikasa.

“Come on down”,

Desperate pleas by desperate people.

“Mikasa, please, he’s not going to move”,

Armin’s voice is so small, did she dream it?

Eren is a giant made of stone, surrounded by his equals.

Mikasa is an omen of death perched on his shoulder.

* * *

 

“Well, that wasn’t quite what I was expecting.” 

Jean’s voice is very loud as he talks to Armin’s back. Armin stares at what’s left of his family, and this is all that Jean has to say about it. What he means is: please move, please come inside with Sasha and Connie and me, don’t just stand there, do something, you’re making me uncomfortable, don’t you know we also lost everything? But instead of these truths, Jean says whatever his mouth thinks is a good enough substitute.

“I was.” Armin’s voice is so quiet Jean has to bow down a bit to hear him, “I… I was the one who told him to do this. Just like hardening, only it’s permanent.”

Armin’s laugh is one Jean only heard when he was about to murder someone. His hand hovers before he places it squarely on Armin’s shoulder, trying to be comforting, like a leader should be. He wants to tell Armin to shut up, but the boy continues,

“I told him it was the only way. The only way to stop this bloody war. You eat the evil and you make yourself stone, that’s what their books said… Eat the evil, eat the evil...”

Armin can’t stop laughing, and his laughter sounds like sobs. But he doesn’t fight when Jean pulls him inside, and eventually he stops laughing and just starts crying instead. They make soup that only Sasha manages to eat, and they wait for dawn.

It was a children’s book that they discovered among Reiner’s things.

Armin is the one who reads it, of course. The others were going to use it for fire starter, but Armin clings to it and makes those kicked-puppy eyes until Levi just “tchs” and lets him keep it.

(Sometimes Jean wants to kick Armin for real, just to give him a good reason for pulling those fucking eyes. Who would want to do that to a friend? But one day Sasha mumbles “I could just slap him sometimes”, and Jean feels happier knowing they can be awful people together.)

It takes him months to translate it, even though it goes quicker once they capture Reiner and the others. Torturing their friends for stories, this too is war.

Jean thought it was just about sacrificing yourself for some stupid ideal, or staying away from the battle and living the good life. Instead he keeps on living and, honestly, he’s a bit sick of it.

In the book, the story goes like this:

There is a boy, a perfectly ordinary boy. One day, a mysterious stranger knocks on this boy’s door. He is the Chosen Warrior, he must come with the stranger to find more about his true self. The boy says, “Not me, I steal apples and pull girl’s braids, I’m no hero.”

The stranger says, “You must fulfill your destiny.”

When Armin tells them the story, Jean thinks he’s heard it before.

The stranger and the boy come upon a witch. The witch says she can teach the boy to fight, but the boy says “I’ve fought with fists and sticks, I’ve broken noses and I’ve killed men in duel. I can jump higher than anyone, and I’m strong and good. What can an old crone like you teach me?”

The witch beats him to a pulp, until the boy begs for mercy and guidance.

The witch tells him the truth about himself:

In times of great need like the ones we live, God calls upon a pure woman, a woman of strength and cunning, and he gives her a fox. The woman must hide the fox and feed it for the winter. It is a beautiful fox, with beautiful fur of red and gold, the woman lies with it and shares her heat so it survives the winter. She feeds it and hides it from others who might want a coat out of such a beautiful gift. The woman hides the fox under her clothes, close to her heart. The fox eats her slowly, first her teats, then her bowels, all the way into her skull, the woman smiles and only dies when she is allowed. From her bones, a child emerges.  This is how you make a giant, the old witch says.

The stranger tells the boy, “Eat your evils.”

And so the boy becomes his true form. He eats the ones who would destroy his home and his family, he stands as the protector of his village, he is admired and feared and he feasts on monsters. There he stands, a saviour to all, but he’s still always hungry. He eats the sheep and all the cattle, steals the fish from the river, and in the end he looks at his friends, and he wants to eat them too.

He wants to eat the world.

He will eat everything and only the darkness whence he came from will stand, in the end even the stars shall be consumed.

But there is still something of the boy inside the monster, something that remembers apples and braids and summers. The boy becomes stone, all is well and beautiful with his sacrifice. They sing songs of this warrior for ages and ages.

Armin wonders what kind of people tell these stories.

Jean doesn’t have to read a whole lot of books to understand that it’s a whole different culture than the one who builds walls to feel safe.

Mikasa says, “Eren, no.”

But they all know it’s too late.

Jean doesn’t allow himself to hope that maybe this is the end of it. It seems too clean, too easy. Shouldn’t they suffer more? But then he remember’s Marco’s freckles, divided in half by a clean bite and he closes his fist on the bone around his neck. No, it’s enough. He’s ready for it to be over, it was enough.

The next day, Levi and Erwin lead their green eyed monster boy to the captives. He unhinges his snake mouth and eats them whole.

Annie first, still enclosed in crystal, never awake for it. Then Reiner, who is himself in his final moments, standing perfectly straight and never screaming. Bertholdt struggles and cries and sweats and his screams will stay with them for a long time.

When you’re eating your nightmares, sometimes you eat your friends.

The monster formerly known as Eren stands in the middle of the walls as they crumble around him. The skeletons inside look at their new master, and one by one they become stone.

We make our own legends, and then we build them statues.

It’s the third day since Eren became stone, and Mikasa still hasn’t moved.

They bring her food and place it at the bottom of Eren’s feet, next to the flowers and the posters looking for missing people.

The next day the food is gone, and that brings them some comfort.

She has her blades with her, and her gear. She sits on Eren’s shoulder for seven days and seven nights. No one knows if she’s waiting for him to wake up so she can hold her brother again, or to be the one who truly kills him.

As the second week passes, Levi climbs his way up the titan, without the 3D gear, just with feline grace and heaving muscles. He has no problem in carving support into the stone giant. This is no longer a person. Perhaps, it never was.

No one knows what Levi says to make her come down. Then again, no one asks.

* * *

 

“Have you come here to tell me to come down?”

“Yes.”

“He was my brother. Once, he gave me my life back. He told me to fight for it, and I did, he stained himself with blood, for me. He didn’t even think twice.”

“It was in your file.”

“What kind of kid does that? What kind of kid’s first instinct is to kill?”

“His world was black and white, that’s what happens with fucking idiots. Are you coming down or should we bring you would so you can build a little tree house in your titan?”

“He looked up to you.”

“His name was on my blade, he was mine to kill.”

They sit on top of the titan, looking at the sunsetting over the wall-less town. All this open space, between the legs of giants, is still new to them. Eventually, Levi sighs and takes her hand, before he says:

“Mikasa, life is for the living. You breathe, you eat, you shit, you die. He didn’t sacrifice himself so you could mope forever. If that is all you want, I’ll throw you off this fucking titan right now. I’ll bet the fall kills you.”

“I-I…”

“Now or never. Come down one way, or the other.”

The way down was slow and unsteady. They use the carvings on the titan’s stone skin. When they touch the ground, Mikasa crumbles down into human debris. Levi never touches her, simply waits until it’s over and then offers her an impeccable hankerchief.

“Levi?”

“Hm?”

“Will it ever stop hurting?”

“You cut down the part that hurts. Eventually you cut down to the bone, and there’s nothing left that can touch you.”

The day is dawning around them, brighter now that there are no walls around. The stone statue’s long shadows cut the city up.

“Levi, can I kill you? One day, when you’re ready.”

“Yeah, sure, why not. It would probably be a fucking honor to be killed by you, Mikasa.”

* * *

 

Jean dreams about Marco.

He dreams about counting all his freckles, marking each one with a kiss, licking and biting at them until Marco is too flushed for Jean to see his freckles properly. That earns him a light slap in his freckled butt, and Marco’s giggle is so loud that Jean has to kiss the laughter away from his lips. He loses count again and again.

Marco has 241 freckles spread over his shoulders and chest, over his cute butt and his button nose. He has a weird cluster of them on his right ear, but none on the left, which offends the perfectionist in Jean. He asks Marco, “How did a city kid like you get so many of them? Were you playing shirtless outside all of the fucking time? Trying to get pretty girls to notice you?”

In this dream, Marco grabs his face and kisses him senseless, mumbling against his lips,

“You. Are a big fucking idiot, Jean Kirstein.” He mutters. Jean watches him from under his eyelashes and Marco is painted in a kaleidoscope of colors.“Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

So many colors, pinks and blues and light yellows, and it’s only then that Jean understands that he is crying, the light filtering between the tears stuck in his eyes.

“What, what have I missed?”

His hand is wet with warm hot blood. He blinks the tears in panic, and watches as Marco falls apart, until he is only half of himself. Jean can feel the wet emptiness of bone and flesh where before were freckles and sun.

This never happened, he tells himself when he wakes up.

This never happened, you were just friends.

This never happened, you never kissed him.

This never happened, and Jean breaks down crying into his pillow grabbing the small fragment of a bone that he’s not even sure if it’s Marco.

* * *

 

“You know, people used to do that to saints”

“What the hell you talking about?” Jean is irritated. He woke up to his routine nightmare, it’s about 3 in the morning and the room is dark enough that Armin shouldn’t be able to see his face or what he’s holding.

All of them have nightmares now, so Jean knows he’s not special. That, most of all, is war.

“I’ve been in the secret library of the church a lot.” Armin says. “With the walls coming down, and titans extinct, they have deserted and now there are millions of forbidden books to sift through… The old church, before titans and before the walls, they had saints. People close to God. And you could pray to them for miracles. If you liked a particular saint, you could steal their bones, little pieces of them, and they would protect you.”

There is silence for a long time, and Jean allows himself the hope that Armin has fallen back asleep and will leave him alone with his thoughts for now. But minutes later, there is another whisper:

“Jean.” Armin says, “Is that Marco?”

“I-I don’t know for sure.” Jean manages to say eventually, “There… There were so many. I just… I took a bit of his finger before they threw him to the fire but… Some days, I’m not sure.”

He knows he doesn’t need to justify himself. They all saw so many things worse than people loving whoever they want, that even Jean doesn’t know why he hides these truths. He knows he doesn’t need to justify himself. He still does it:

“It doesn’t mean anything. It just seemed wrong, to die like that, without anyone knowing it was you. Somehow… I think we deserved better than that. We could’ve been so much, but we gave our life for these people. And now they bake their bread and raise their children and they’ll never know that one day a kid named Marco died for their sake.”

That’s what hurts the most. The city rebuilding around them. It’s not even been six months since Eren’s sacrifice, but already there is new life and new problems. A economic crisis. A political power vacuum. Jean vaguely feels he should be more interested in this. Everything he ever wanted is waiting for him to grab it, but he stays with the corps and they keep patrolling Titans that will not move.

Armin says:

“For their sins. That’s what they said, back in the old days. They died for our sins.”

“I don’t know man, I don’t know who sinned so much to deserve all this bullshit.”

* * *

 

Outside the walls, there are hundreds of Titans that turned to stone right where they were. Ambling around looking stupid, like overgrown distorted babies.

There are colonization efforts, and explorers. Jean, Armin and Mikasa are among the first ones to go. They can’t handle normalcy. Mikasa can’t sleep, never sleeps. Jean trembles at loud noises and is shocked to find out that he can’t stop, not until several hours later. Armin doesn’t show his wounds to the outside world, but he has the single mindedness of a veteran. He reads and reads and reads.

The government is glad to get rid of them, and they bring back news about the outside world. Where crops could go. What other nations exist.

The first time they come home and Jean sees children playing while climbing Eren, he has to vomit immediately, and all the children point and call him drunk.

He still carries the piece of bone around his neck.

It’s hard for him to accept that he has now lived double the years given to Marco. He still dreams of him, and in those dreams he’s young. He still feels like a boy, too big for his bones, without managing to speak.

They go outside, they see things, they sometimes kill things, and they come back.

Mikasa and Jean know that Armin is plotting something way before the bookish man ever comes clean to them. They just wait, they make camp and they cook the food, and they live, everyday, while Armin laughs and talks to himself over the books they find along the way.

One night, he finally sits around the fire with them and says,

“I’ve found something from the old technology. They call it a facility. It sounds like it’s a Resurrection Temple.”

Resurrection Temples have long been a part of the legends they all know from the old times. It’s part of the stories they tell themselves, about experiments that placed Humanity above God, and how that hubris was almost the end of Humanity. It’s right there with travelling to the stars, in both credibility and myth-like status.

By this point in their life, both Jean and Mikasa are too wise to laugh at these old tales. Instead, they carefully consider what Armin is telling them, and why he’s telling them this. Obviously, he wants them to go there. Armin, who wears his hair cropped short since he began balding, has trouble knowing when it’s correct to smile nowadays, so the look he means as encouraging is all but unhinged. Jean notices how the man keeps glancing at the piece of bone around his neck.

There are other stories about Resurrection Temples. That those were the birthplaces of Titans, awful genetic experiments gone wrong. People trying to bring their loved ones back from the dead, but ending up with a mockery of life.

Armin is a very smart man, bringing up such an idea to these two people, and no other.

Mikasa speaks first,

“Do you think we could bring Eren back?”

“Maybe. It’s not impossible. Obviously, it’s problematic. Eren’s entire DNA was converged with the Titans, and it would be very, very dangerous. But we could definitely bring Marco back, no reason why not. And studying him, it would bring us closer to Eren.”

Jean knows a shitty sales pitch when he listens to one, but what do they have to lose? On the wrong side of forty, knees aching, face lined, and what do they have to show for it? They survived, and did nothing with their lives.

He shrugs,

“Sure, let’s go find this temple and potentially bring forth the end of civilization again. I don’t have anything planned for thursday.”

Armin’s smile is still scary, but when he starts laughing Mikasa joins in, and that’s a bit better. Even now that she’s older, Mikasa is still one of the most beautiful women Jean has ever seen. She has white in her hair, but not nearly as much as himself, and she has only grown stronger and more disciplined with age. He loves her, and he loves Armin. He loves this ridiculous heartbroken family, and if they want the apocalypse, then Jean Kirschtein shall give it to them.

* * *

 

They find the temple a year later, buried inside a rock in a desert.

They left without a word to anyone, and they were probably declared dead, if anyone would care. Mikasa feels a passing twinge of guilt when she thinks of not being there to kill Levi.

Then she doesn’t think twice about it.

Armin moves in front of them with the focus of a prophet. He is emaciated, even though Jean and Mikasa try to make him eat all the time, and his eyes look even bigger then they did when they were children. When they finally find the entrance to the temple, Armin wants to open it right away and tries to do it with his own hands. Jean and Mikasa ignore him and make camp, until their blonde leader gives up and goes to the tent to sleep for twelve hours straight.

The next day, Jean and Mikasa open the steel doors.

Inside, there is technology they never dreamed existed. There are vats of murky water, 6 feet tall, and creatures inside them. There are other, smaller glass vessels, and in some the water is clean.

Inside, there are people. One girl looks just like Mikasa.

The older woman looks at herself, sleeping inside the liquid, and she shows no reaction.

Jean thinks to himself, God please don’t show me my face, I would not survive, I’ve seen enough horrors.

Thankfully, all the other clear glass sleeping pods are filled with strangers.

Armin presses buttons and machines come alive. For hours, he reads and plays with an hunger that looks uncomfortably vacant. Not human. Purely theoretical.

They sleep.

He asks Jean for the bone fragment a few hours later.

They sleep again.

There are showers in the Resurrection Temple. Jean and Mikasa use this luxury without thought to water rations. They find white clothes, separated by size, and wear them. Jean looks at himself in the mirror and an old man stares back, sun damaged and battle scarred. He looks older than he feels. He also looks larger, in his shoulders and arms, and mean, in his haunted eyes. It’s strange for him to see this, because he feels like a boy. He never got older than seventeen, not knowing what words would be right to say to a freckled, laughing boy.

They explore the temple, and they sleep, and they avoid Armin until, on the seventh day, they hear him laugh and scream in ecstasy.

The sound echoes through the dark empty halls. Mikasa and Jean run to the operations room, and there they find him.

They find them.

Armin is looking at the naked teenager like a proud mother who has just given birth. When he looks up at his friends, Jean feels ice in his stomach, Oh my God, what have we done?

But then the boy opens his eyes, and smiles, and he doesn’t have freckles yet but Jean would know those eyes anywhere.

The boy says,

“Jean, you look old.”

Bring back the apocalypse, then.


End file.
